Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  Syenius, who was as observant as a good salesman has to be, murmured to an assistant who returned a bracelet of pearls and sapphires on gold to the back room. Another man bustled in with a cushion on which was spread a necklace of seven gold plaques, each embossed with the winged figure of the Mother Goddess flanked by rampant lions.

  “This is very old,” Syenius murmured. “It came to me from Rhodes, but I cannot say with certainty that it was made there. Is the Lady Hedia perchance a devotee of the Great Mother?”

  Alphena examined the necklace carefully. Hedia didn’t have any religion that her daughter knew about: she believed in the gods, but she trusted them to keep to their own spheres while human beings—Hedia herself, at any rate—dealt with human affairs.

  Alphena didn’t want to be insulting about religion, though: Egyptians were notoriously superstitious. The necklace interested her. Either its age or the goddess images whispered to the secret places in Alphena’s mind, but this was not the piece that had drawn her to the shop.

  Syenius made a hand gesture toward the service area. Alphena leaned back from the necklace, frowning. The attendant carried the cushion away, and another slim youth swept in with a diadem on a tray of mica in a silver frame.

  That’s it. That’s what I’ve been dreaming of.

  “The work is of Tarantine style,” Syenius said. “The piece came from Egypt, from a tomb in Egypt, one of the later Ptolemies. Many craftsmen came to Alexandria to suit their taste and that of the Greek mercenaries they hired as well.”

  Alphena didn’t know history, certainly not Egyptian history, and didn’t care. What she cared about was the stone gripped in the jaws of the two gold lion heads at the front of the diadem. The remainder of the piece was a simple gold band with a clamp at the back for adjustment.

  A fragment of Alphena’s mind noticed that the gold lions were well crafted, but her consciousness was focused on the jewel the lions were holding. It was a flat—well, slightly convex—plate of pulsing color the size of her thumbnail. The edges were irregular but rimmed with heavy gold foil to which the lion jaws were soldered.

  It wasn’t a color; it was all colors. When Alphena turned her head, she remembered the stone as blue; but under close scrutiny bands and bubbles of color rippled up from deep inside it.

  Alphena blinked and looked at Syenius. There is no inside. It’s as thin as the foil of the setting.

  “What is this jewel?” she snapped. “And where did it come from?”

  Her voice sounded angry in her own ears. In truth she was more frightened.

  “Your Ladyship,” Syenius said, “I know no more than I’ve told you: the diadem, including the stone, was found in the tomb of a pharaoh who died during the One Hundred and Thirty-second Olympiad. I have never seen or heard of another stone of its type, nor has any other dealer to whom I have shown it.”

  Alphena had seen this sort of stone before. The Nubians who danced in her dreams strung chips like this one on lengths of twine to make their belts.

  Syenius had stiffened slightly at the initial edge in Alphena’s voice. As she relaxed from her initial surprise, the jeweler did also.

  He coughed and said, “You’ll notice that the edges are irregular. I wondered at that when I purchased the piece on a buying trip to Alexandria, but I’ve been unable to cut it myself. One of my most skilled workmen tried the edge under the foil with a diamond drill but was unable to scratch it.”

  “But…,” said Alphena as she considered what she had just been told. “How could naked savages pierce them to string?”

  “They could not pierce a stone like this, Your Ladyship,” Syenius said, gesturing toward the diadem with his left hand. “No more than they could fly. So far as I know there is nothing harder than a diamond, and a diamond could not mark this.”

  Syenius wore no jewelry, and hanging from the door to the service room was a peaked “Phrygian” cap, the mark of a freedman. That a man so obviously successful and cultured would openly admit his former slavery made him suddenly more impressive to Alphena.

  “I see,” she said, but she didn’t really see. It had been a dream, but it seemed utterly real in memory. “I.…”

  Alphena rose from the couch, suiting her action to the sentence she hadn’t completed aloud. The shop assistant swung the tray back as though he and the customer were parts of the same mechanical device, one acting on the other like a lever.

  I wasn’t going to knock it to the floor! Alphena thought, but she controlled the flash of anger before it reached her lips. She was … disturbed … by the situation, and therefore ready to take her mood out on whoever was closest.

  Hedia had taught Alphena the value of bridling her temper. If people liked you, they were apt to treat you better. That was as true of the servants who fed and dressed her as it was of her father’s senatorial friends.

  Alphena didn’t think she would ever be as smooth as her mother. She had seen Hedia calmly direct that a maid be sold to a dockside brothel for stealing a lace mantilla; she hadn’t raised her voice or shown anything harsher than ironic amusement. But Hedia’s daughter was getting better than the frustrated child who screamed more often than she smiled.

  “I will take the diadem with me,” she said. “Send the bill to Balbinus at my father’s house here.”

  She realized as she spoke that she had given Syenius a license to rob her father. The money didn’t matter, not measured against Saxa’s wealth, but the thought of being imposed on hardened her expression.

  As though he had read her thoughts, Syenius said, “Thank you, Your Ladyship. I think that your steward will consider the cost to be very moderate.”

  An assistant was wrapping the diadem in red silk brocade. The other assistant held ready a polished wooden box to hold the item. Florina joined the assistants to take the completed parcel.

  Syenius smiled faintly. “To be honest, Your Ladyship,” he said, “I find the piece disquieting, though I couldn’t give a reason for that. I actually considered taking the gem from its setting and disposing of it in the sea.”

  He shrugged. “It was a unique piece, though,” he said. “I wasn’t willing to do that for … antiquarian reasons, perhaps. It’s so much easier to destroy things than to create them, is it not?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Alphena said. Her throat was dry.

  Florina had the package. Alphena turned; Theodromus pulled open the grill and bowed.

  “I’m glad it’s going to a good home,” Syenius said to his customer’s back.

  I hope you’re right about that, Alphena thought. But for now at least she would trust her instinct.

  * * *

  HEDIA KNEW FROM THE BUSTLE among the servants that something was happening. “Something” might not be very interesting to her, of course.

  The house here on the Bay had eighty servants. That wasn’t exceptional for a senator’s household: Saxa had some two hundred in his town house in Carce, and some of his colleagues had larger staffs yet. Nevertheless, most of what any one servant of eighty did during the day was nothing. They were likely to find excitement in matters that made their mistress yawn.

  At the archway between the loggia where Hedia sat and the house proper, Syra whispered to an understeward, then returned purposefully to her mistress.

  “Speak,” Hedia said. There was no point in trying to conceal the news from the six additional servants with her in the loggia.

  Two held trays of snacks and drinks; Hedia occasionally sipped diluted wine poured from the carafe that sat in a water-filled basin of earthenware to keep cool, but she always directed Syra to carry out that duty. Two more held ostrich-plume fans; Hedia disliked the fans’ repetitive motion at any time, and the sea breeze this afternoon was delightfully sufficient.

  The last two carried saffron silk sunshades, which would be useful only if Hedia moved to the corner of the curved bench touched when the sun slipped under the marble roof. There was no chance of her doing so on such a warm day.

&nb
sp; Even if Hedia would prefer that a message be kept secret, it would have been impossible. The understeward would babble to somebody. Balbinus, who had sent the understeward, would babble to somebody. And in the order of a dozen other babbling servants had been present when the message was delivered to Balbinus.

  Also, the message was probably completely unimportant.

  “The Lady Alphena has returned from shopping,” Syra whispered. “She will shortly come to see you with the piece of jewelry which she purchased this afternoon.”

  Hedia lifted her chin slightly in acknowledgment. She had received messages even more inconsequential—but not many. Regardless, it would be interesting to see what Alphena’s taste in jewelry was when she was on her own.

  Almost with the words, Alphena appeared in the archway. She was followed by her new maid—who seemed to be working out, Hedia was glad to see. She would not have interfered with her daughter’s choice of a chief maid, but Hedia might have interfered—discreetly—with the maid herself if she had turned out to be unsuitable.

  Hedia rose, smiling with cool pleasure. “Greetings, Daughter,” she said. “I hope you had a successful outing? Here—”

  She patted the cushion on which she had been sitting. A second cushion appeared beside it, winged by the hands of a servant who disappeared as swiftly as he had arrived.

  “—won’t you sit with me and tell me all about it.”

  Hedia really was glad to see Alphena. The girl was Saxa’s offspring by blood, but she was quickly becoming Hedia’s daughter in spirit if not tastes.

  Alphena turned and took the flat wooden box her maid was carrying. Hedia noted the dovetail joints at the corners and the swirling grain of the lid. Very upscale, she thought.

  Hedia had a great deal of experience judging the quality of a gift without seeming to more than glance at it. While she didn’t do anything simply for the money, the amount of money an admirer spent on her was certainly a factor in judging the man himself. You could never know too much about people with whom you might shortly find yourself in intimate contact.

  She saw Alphena’s eyes drift out to sea past the pink-flowering branch growing over the loggia’s railing from the almond tree planted below. The air was hazy this afternoon, muting the blue water and softening the lines of the ships on the water. Many were pleasure craft, but there were working vessels too: motionless fisherman, and freighters tacking on a breeze that was strong enough to spare their crews the backbreaking work of the sweeps.

  Hedia found the sea restful to watch, though she didn’t care to get it on her body. Seawater made her feel sticky when it dried, and sand had a way of getting into delicate places that salt made even more uncomfortable.

  Smiling, she said to Alphena, “It’s even prettier at night, when the fishermen’s lamps reflect on the water.”

  Alphena swallowed and sat down beside her. “I was thinking of someone else, I suppose. Sorry.”

  Hedia lifted her chin, barely enough to be called a motion. There had been a man in Alphena’s life, not so very long ago. Well, Hedia knew that feeling also.

  When Alphena didn’t immediately bring up the subject that had brought her out to the loggia, Hedia said, “Our lord Saxa and your brother are dining tonight with Senator Macsturnas. Would you care to join me, or would you prefer to be on your own for dinner?”

  The words jolted Alphena out of her thoughts. She looked startled, then forced a smile and said, “I haven’t been thinking.…” Then, “I’d like to eat with you, Mother. I’m sorry that I was—”

  She fluttered her free hand with a grimace.

  “—missing, there.”

  “Not at all,” Hedia said. On instinct, she touched the back of the girl’s wrist. “Now, what is it that you’ve purchased? Something to wear tomorrow night to dinner with Bersinus?”

  “Well, I…,” Alphena said. She seems embarrassed. Surely it’s not a dil—

  “Here!” the girl said abruptly, thrusting the box toward Hedia. “Mother, I got it for you. I just … well, I just did.”

  Hedia was embarrassed in turn for the direction her thoughts had taken. She did not, she was sure, show any sign of that as she took the box.

  Pausing, she let the kneeling Florina hold the bottom with one hand and remove the lid with the other. Hedia unfolded the silk wrapper inside. She kept her eyes on the gift rather than the giver, because staring would embarrass Alphena even more.

  Hedia hadn’t known what to expect. The diadem was beyond anything she could have imagined.

  “This is beautiful,” Hedia said. “And—”

  She met Alphena’s eyes.

  “—it’s a terrible thing as well, as beautiful and terrible as standing in the middle of a lightning storm. How did you find it?”

  “I went into a jeweler’s shop and asked for something unusual for my mother,” Alphena said, her voice carefully controlled. “The jeweler said it was Tarantine work, but it came from Egypt.”

  She held Hedia’s eyes, but that was obviously a trick to make it appear she was being more candid than she really was. Don’t think you can lie to me, missie! Hedia thought, but that was unworthy. The girl was learning how to handle difficult discussions, a skill that every woman needed to perfect.

  “Gold is gold,” Hedia said, her voice chilled to the edge of harshness. “What is the stone and where did it come from?”

  “He didn’t know,” Alphena said. Her hands were clenched tightly together. “Syenius didn’t know. He said he’d never seen anything like it. And I think it frightened him. He wasn’t a man easy to frighten, I think.”

  She reached for the box again, saying, “I’m sorry; I’ll—”

  “You will not,” said Hedia, lifting the diadem. “I don’t so easily give up things that so impress me, my dear. Although—”

  Her smile was suddenly mischievous.

  “—I’m generally willing to share them. But that in good time.”

  She fitted the gold band onto her head. The bedchamber servants had appeared in response to quickly relayed hand signals from Syra, but Hedia chose not to let them place the diadem for her.

  When Hedia tipped an index finger toward her, a maid—a specialist—held the mirror in place. It was a circle of bronze, polished as smooth as sunlight and then silvered. The face blazed momentarily with the presence—it was more than light—of the jewel; then the image settled back and Hedia viewed herself wearing the diadem.

  “Your jeweler was right to be frightened,” she said, smiling again. It was the sort of smile she might wear while watching an execution.

  I look like the Queen of Heaven. Or perhaps of the Underworld, a queen worthy of Hades … as the mewling Proserpina of myth is not.

  “I like it very much,” she went on, removing the diadem and placing it back on the silk wrapping. “I will wear it tomorrow. Syra, remind me to choose a dinner gown that goes with it. Gray, I think, but I’ll want to try it against pure white before I decide.”

  The closed box and the bedchamber staff vanished with exemplary lack of incident. Hedia wasn’t a petty tyrant, but she expected her servants to do their jobs quickly and unobtrusively. There was nothing petty about Hedia’s anger toward those who failed to meet her standards.

  Alphena rose to her feet with a grace that equaled that of the most sophisticated ladies of Carce, her stepmother among them. Relief evident on her face, she said, “Then it’s really all right?”

  “Yes,” said Hedia, rising also. “It makes me look like a queen.”

  There was a bustle among the servants again. It was like watching birds in the shrubbery when a cat is prowling, though of course the servants were much quieter in their excited twittering.

  “I’m going to choose a dress now, dear,” she said to Alphena. “Would you care to join me? And perhaps you could show me what you’re planning to wear, so that we don’t clash too badly. Though—”

  She gestured toward the doorway through which a maid had carried the diadem.

&
nbsp; “—your gift has its own logic to which we both must bow.”

  “I think…,” Alphena said. She paused to consider, then went on, “I think the jewel will go with any color. If it wants to. And you did look like a queen. Like a goddess.”

  “I’ll try to be worthy of your gift,” Hedia said, giving no hint of how surprised she was at her daughter’s perception. This wasn’t the resentful brat of a few months ago.

  Though Hedia knew better than to take all credit for the change. Various things, most particularly the threat of imminent death, had brought Alphena to a more useful approach to life.

  The girl flashed an unaffected smile. “Thank you, Mother,” she said. “I’m feeling a little dizzy now, though. I believe I’ll take a nap.”

  She went off with her entourage of servants. The cudgel men didn’t escort Lady Alphena within the house, of course, but she had collected a considerable coterie of maids and attendants in the past few weeks. Ambitious servants used the status of service to the daughter of the house to lift them from the general mob of their fellows.

  That said a great deal about the change in the girl’s behavior. She had become Lady Alphena, who reflected glory on those who served her, and who, however terrible she might be to her enemies, was just and generous to those who served her well.

  “Syra,” Hedia said, following the girl with her eyes. “Has someone just arrived?”

  “Master Corylus came to see Lord Varus, Your Ladyship,” Syra said. “They’re speaking in Lord Varus’ suite.”

  Hedia gestured minusculely to indicate she had received the information. She did not otherwise move.

  Corylus had left them at the animal compound to return to his father’s house; there had been no suggestion at the time that he would be back today. This visit must have something to do with Varus’ vision at the compound and perhaps with the lizardmen … but perhaps not.

  “I will look at dresses now, Syra,” Hedia said, starting back into the house.

  She was a successful woman, which in this world meant a woman who could turn the plans of men to her own benefit and the benefit of her family. The plans here might be those of demons or worse, but the principle was the same.